Shopgirl Mary Turner (Norma Talmadge) is sent to prison for three years for a crime she didn't commit- stealing from her workplace. She vows to get back at her boss for everything he owes her for doing her wrong, and her time in prison isn't exactly deserved.
She makes a friend in prison named Aggie (), and when they get out, Mary vows to go straight instead of being wrapped up in a life of crime like Aggie plans to do, but when she can't get any jobs due to having done time in prison, she decides to commit suicide by jumping into a lake. She is saved, however, by a conman named Joe Garson (), and relents to a life of crime. She gets back at her boss, little by little, raking in the money...within the law. Another scheme of hers is to take up with the boss's son (), but when he proposes, love gets in the way of revenge. A big heist turns to an attempted frame-up, a man is killed, and Mary is accused of murder.
I would have given this film a higher rating, seeing as I liked the story and the acting was good (particularly by Talmadge), but the story just kept plodding on and on. Too much of the story was devoted to the courtship of Mary and the boss's son, too much time was devoted to the attempted heist, but contrary to the remake Paid (1930), the scenes in the police station don't seem to go on long enough. The editing is pretty bad, odd fadeouts after the intertitles but rather sloppy editing from scene to scene where the film appears to have been spliced right on top of each other.
As I mentioned above, Norma Talmadge gave a very good performance as Mary Turner, bar the fact that her face seemed to have been stuck in the same wronged expression for most of the film. That's a nitpicky detail, and if there had been Oscars in 1923, Talmadge would have won. As with a lot of her contemporaries, her filmography isn't very vast, because a lot of her silents have been lost, but the ones that have survived aren't as good as this one.
The actor who played the son of Mary's boss was pretty boring and I don't see why Mary would have fallen for him in the first place, but love is blind, I guess. Provided some good comic relief as Aggie ("Oh, I'm so fwightened!" is a phrase she likes to repeat).
Overall, recommended, but be aware that it really does overstay its welcome. A cut of twenty minutes wouldn't have impaired the story any.
